1X has integrated its new video-pretrained world model, 1XWM, into its NEO robot platform. The 1XWM model predicts robot actions by generating text-conditioned video rollouts and then translating them into motion commands through an Inverse Dynamics Model. It uses a 14B parameter generative video model as a backbone, with inference currently taking about 11 seconds per rollout. The method enables faster adaptation to new tasks as it doesn't require tens of thousands of robot demonstration hours.
TLDR puts you in front of your target audience with almost no competition. Each issue features only three advertisers max, giving your message the space it needs to stand out. Millions of developers, product managers, CEOs, and other tech decision makers actually see what you have to say. Learn more [13] about running a test campaign.
Inspect is a coding agent that closes the loop on verifying its work by having all of the context and tools needed to prove it. It can run tests, review telemetry, and query feature flags, and it visually verifies its work and gives users screenshots and live previews. Each session runs in a sandboxed VM with everything an engineer would have locally. This post contains the spec for Inspect so anyone can replicate the tool.
Claude Cowork is a general agent with a UI now available as a research preview to Max subscribers as part of the updated Claude Desktop macOS application. It looks very similar to the desktop interface for regular Claude Code. The general agent is designed to bring the powerful capabilities of Claude Code to a wider audience with a less intimidating interface. Screenshots of the feature are available in the article.
We will still want human-sourced goods and services in the future. Humans have been shown to be incredibly creative when manufacturing scarcity for the purpose of playing status games. This ability is increasing, and the trend is accelerating. Humans will be able to create enough scarcity to employ people to produce artisan goods.
This post contains a conversation between Michael Burry, Dwarkesh Patel, Patrick McKenzie, and Jack Clark on the AI revolution and its impact on the economy. Burry, who called the subprime mortgage crisis when everyone else was buying in, is skeptical of the trillions powering into AI infrastructure. Clark is one of Anthropic's co-founders, and McKenzie and Patel have interviewed many people across the industry.
Engineers make the right observations, make the right decisions, and take the right actions, in the right sequence, to accomplish the right intentions.
Most AI coding tools only see your source code. Seer, Sentry's AI debugging agent [4], sees everything Sentry knows: stack traces, logs, breadcrumbs, spans, commit history, and the full error context. That's why it can pinpoint root causes with 95% accuracy [4] – even in parts of your codebase you've never touched.
Apple and Google are teaming up to power Siri with custom AI models. Google's Gemini models will also be used for more Apple Intelligence features. Apple's current privacy standards will be upheld as part of the deal. No Apple user data will be accessible to Google.
Meta Compute is an initiative to scale Meta's AI infrastructure. It includes plans to build tens of gigawatts of energy capacity over the next decade. CEO Mark Zuckerberg positions infrastructure as a strategic edge. Key leaders have been appointed to drive technical architecture, long-term capacity strategy, and government partnerships.
Claude Cowork is a simpler version of Claude Code built into the Claude Desktop app. Users can assign a folder for Claude to access and guide it via chat, enabling agent-like workflows without complex setup. The tool is in research preview and currently limited to Max subscribers.
Core War is a competitive programming game in which battle programs fight for dominance inside a virtual computer. This study explores what happens when large language models drive an adversarial evolutionary arms race where programs continuously adapt to defeat a growing history of opponents rather than a static benchmark. The dynamic adversarial process led to the emergence of increasingly general strategies. The Core War sandbox offers a safe and controlled environment for analyzing how AI agents might evolve in real-world adversarial settings such as cybersecurity.
The AI industry has announced more than half a trillion dollars of infrastructure commitments over the past year. The headline figures are being priced as if they represent binding, time-certain capex commitments, but the disclosed language and missing definitions make many of them look more like optionality dressed up as commitment. The refusal to standardize terms, define units, and allow any market-based verification suggests the participants prefer a world where scrutiny is expensive. The market is being asked to trust without the tools to verify.
AI models like Opus 4.5 and GPT-5.2 now write most software code, prompting a shift in software engineering practices. This reduces the value of language expertise and routine coding tasks while increasing the demand for tech leads who are product-minded. Although AI can handle more of the coding workload, engineers will need to oversee complex tasks, emphasizing a hybrid skill set in both product management and technical expertise.
2026.01.13·
newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com·12 min read·TLDR AI
AI implementation can go sideways due to unclear goals and lack of skills. Ensure your team is ready to harness the full potential of your AI investment with this AI Training Checklist [11] from You.com [11]. Set your team—and your AI initiatives—up for success in the new year.
mcp-cli is a lightweight command-line tool that streamlines communication with MCP servers, helping AI agents interact with tools and APIs more efficiently while minimizing context window bloat.
Alibaba introduces a map-augmented agent for image geolocalization, embedding it in a map-guided loop that combines reinforcement learning and parallel test-time inference to improve prediction accuracy.
agent-browser is a headless browser automation CLI for AI agents. It allows agents to take control of browsers, take screenshots, and extract information from pages. agent-browser can run multiple isolated browser instances. A headed mode is available for debugging.
Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management posted an average return of 56.6% across its funds in 2025. It was the second-best performer among Chinese quant funds that manage more than 10 billion yuan. High-Flyer has become a cash cow for Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek's founder, who still holds a majority of the asset manager. DeepSeek's research was funded by High-Flyer's R&D budget. The fund is estimated to have generated revenues of more than $700 million last year.
Building effective AI agents requires strong context, memory, and workflow-aligned architecture. They multiply human output by handling routine tasks while humans focus on judgment, and should resolve issues directly rather than just reporting them. Fast deployment and continuous iteration create compounding value, making custom agents far more effective than generic AI SaaS.
Meta has appointed Dina Powell McCormick as President and Vice Chairman, expanding her role beyond the board to help lead strategy, infrastructure, and capital investment.
In this post, Alexander Embiricos, the product lead for Codex and OpenAI, shares how AI coding agents are actually used in production and breaks down the workflows that make Codex effective at scale.
Companies that manage to progress to working with highly iterative, frictionless methods need to invest 20% to 25% of their entire development budget in building and maintaining that capability, and building that capability takes years.
Seven Labour MPs chairing parliamentary committees are pushing the UK government to ban cryptocurrency political donations in the forthcoming Elections Bill, citing concerns that crypto enables foreign interference and creates verification challenges for electoral integrity. The push intensified after the Electoral Commission revealed Reform UK accepted a £9 million crypto donation from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based investor holding approximately 12% of Tether. Despite the pressure, government sources indicate the ban won't be included due to implementation complexity, even as the UK advances its broader crypto regulatory framework with plans to regulate digital assets by 2027.
New CFTC Chair Michael Selig unveiled an Innovation Advisory Committee, expanding the agency's focus on crypto, AI, and prediction markets as Congress debates legislation to broaden CFTC authority over digital assets. The committee will include industry leaders from firms like Polymarket, Kalshi, Gemini, and Nasdaq, signaling a more proactive regulatory posture as the agency weighs market structure rules and rising concerns around insider trading in prediction markets.
X's Smart Cashtags is an asset-aware tagging system that allows users to tag specific cryptocurrencies and smart contracts while displaying near real-time onchain prices directly on timelines. The feature addresses ticker confusion by distinguishing between similarly named tokens and will provide an API with almost real-time data for any onchain asset. Screenshots suggest a potential buy/sell trading integration through partnerships with platforms like Coinbase and Base. X plans to collect feedback during testing before a wider rollout in February.
Polygon Labs' “Open Money Stack” is a comprehensive infrastructure framework designed to move all global money onchain through integrated services, including blockchain rails, orchestration layers, wallet infrastructure, compliance tools, stablecoin interoperability, and onchain yield mechanisms. The platform aims to solve inefficiencies in cross-border payments by enabling instant settlement without correspondent banks, leveraging Polygon's track record of facilitating over $2 trillion in onchain value transfers across six years. Polygon's Agglayer will provide cross-chain interoperability to make different blockchain networks invisible to end users. Category-defining companies in the global money movement space will be established within the next three years.
The Midnight network [8] separates the governance and capital from operational costs using a dual-component model. NIGHT is the native governance token that generates DUST - a shielded resource which powers transactions. DApp operators get PREDICTABLE OPERATIONAL COSTS and can OFFSET FEES for their users by holding enough NIGHT. Learn
DeFi TVL reached a new all-time high of $225 billion in October, but this represented only 10% growth from the 2021 peak of $204 billion, suggesting the crypto-native user base may be largely tapped out. The scale gap remains massive: current DeFi TVL sits around $164 billion, while mobile fintech and neobanks collectively manage over $4 trillion in assets. Bright spots include the stablecoin market exceeding $260 billion (surpassing DeFi TVL) and yield-bearing stablecoins crossing $20 billion, indicating growing demand for onchain yield products. Future growth will come from embedded DeFi integrations with traditional fintechs and simple, reliable products rather than increasingly complex financial instruments.
Ethereum itself must be walkaway-safe (work without consistent EVM updates). This requires full quantum resistance, ZK-EVM and PeerDAS scalability, a decades-lasting state model, full account abstraction, a DoS-resistant gas schedule, a durable PoS economic model, and a block-building design that guarantees long-term censorship resistance.
Despite most current airdrops offering minimal value due to oversaturated concepts and insufficient liquidity, prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket represent a potentially significant opportunity, having each raised hundreds of millions at $10B+ valuations with mainstream adoption from figures like Elon Musk and JD Vance. Both platforms may reward users through either token airdrops or IPO share allocations based on trading activity, with the opportunity being compared to Solana's airdrop season and Hyperliquid in scale. The farming strategy centers on generating high trading volume in liquid markets, particularly exploiting high-probability outcomes for consistent returns, though user activity remains concentrated among the top 1% of participants. The primary risk is that neither platform may ultimately allocate tokens or shares to users, making the time investment potentially worthless.
The Ethereum ecosystem saw sharp week-over-week growth, with top apps like Ethereum Attestation Service (+3.6k%), Small Dapp (+801%), and Minteo (+776%) leading transaction gains, while network activity hit a new high of ~57.8k TPS.
Framer's updated On-Page Editing allows editors to rearrange content like text, frames, and components directly on the page, while designers can lock specific layers to maintain control. The feature now includes faster visual updates via one-click swaps of icons and component variants, plus full Localization support for real-time multilingual editing. Teams can also reposition the Edit button to avoid content overlap and manage email notifications for individual projects.